I personally have been wanting to close the book on Brian and Brandon. I met and flew around with Brian shortly after his flight training and did maintenance on his Cessna 182. He told me that the 182 on floats was the poor mans 180. It wasn't too many years after he told me that and the Cessna 182 prices started to rival the Cessna 180. The secret was out of the bag. His 182 was one of the first to be put on floats. The 182 that was used to get the Edo 2870 float STC also lives in Juneau and Brian bought one of the first STCs. N9350X flew fairly well but had the swept back rudder and gave it an odd yaw effect.

Brian Andrews was a part of Governor Sarah Palin's cabinet and some speculated that he skipped town. Those of us that knew him wanted this bad rumor to be squashed. Now we may all be rest assured of his upstanding, honest character.

Yes it was mixed emotions. I think we can all let Brian and Brandon rest in piece now, along with all that knew them.

A quick summery of the day he went missing;It was a bad Southeast weather day that came on suddenly over night. Brian had flown his family into a forest service rental cabin at Young's Lake about 15 minute flight a few days earlier. They had more then one plane load coming out so Brian flew his family to Juneau on the first flight than turned around right away to retrieve the camping gear. Brandon was a newly minted Instrument rated pilot but the float 182 had very basic instruments. Obviously the weather only got worst as noon came on. By time the family reported the plane late the weather made search and rescue difficult. The ELT was tested and working at the last annual so the greatest part of the search was concentrated over the water because no signal was detected. The route between the lake cabin and Juneau airport was almost entirely over water so the searchers were looking for something floating. Now seeing the pictures of the plane and terrain no wonder no one could see the plane. I'm kinda thinking they where using a handheld GPS and got vertigo. Most floatplanes in southeast AK have very poor maintenance on their vacuum system and artificial horizons. Many of us just figured we would land and wait out the weather if it ever got too bad, that's why we have floats. In the real world, you just tell yourself that it's only a fifteen minute flight.